Earlier today, I was having a discussion with a few other players about premium aircraft not giving the extra xp for pilot training. So, now that I am home after a busy day of real life activities, I wanted to find out for sure. To see the amount of xp needed for the next level of skill, move the mouse cursor over the portrait of the pilot on the right side of the screen. The above screen should be what you see.

A single left click should produce the result above. Once you have the numbers you need, queue for a battle....

....and collecting a victory for the example is always a good thing. Once you factor bonuses for X2-X3 events, premium account, switching to decafe coffee, etc....

Last night, I ended a very short session with this battle, producing some astonishing results, like wining and surviving in my Yak-19. I guess watching videos about the Korean Air War, while I am supposed to be working, might be paying off

However, after the great victory, I decided to take a closer look at my progress in this aircraft, which has sat dormant for so long in my hangar. Even if I could continue a streak of stellar games like that one, it's going to take a very long time to reach the tier X Yak-30. Maybe around Christmas/New Years, I will have another serious look at things.

One of the early battles for today's session was with another high tiered aircraft that didn't see a lot of flight time, until recently. The tier VIII Me 262 was one of the most highly feared planes, in the early days of the game. Even now, in the hands of skilled pilots, the deadlyness of this aircraft shouldn't be underestimated.

For me, the 262 is very inflexible, designed to be a high altitude, boom and zoom player killer, without a whole lot of room for....creative flying. However, since this is me we are talking about (okay, I am talking about), I have this tendency to fly planes just wrong, giving up so many advantages that would make more seasoned and skilled players cringe. Take this first battle of the day with the 262 for example....

Now, thanks in a huge part to hawkeyededic, in this age of 1.9.5, I can be a Blackhawk again! Despite the passage of time and odd changes to the gaming code for Planes, my inner child is beyond happy to see this dear friend return. While others maybe trying to put a Mustang IA in their hangars, I will have a much rarer bird, that can't be bought or earned. As a much belated token of my gratitude to both Claudio67 and hawkeyededic, my first attempt at a scored video, staring a resurrected dream....

Having been a back a while, I was feeling pretty confident that my flying skills were back to the same levels before I left. At least, I think I have banged most of the rust off. Looking for something a little different to do and to break away from the higher tiers for a short time, I glanced at the Token Missions. Seems my progress on those were frozen from the last time I had played and I figured I might as well clean up and finish them off.

Between the mission brackets of tier V-VII and VIII-X, I have completed the required tasks. However, it was the I-IV stuff that needed to be taken care of. Scrolling through the aircraft I have in my hangar, I was almost tempted to select a GA to make quick work of this and move on. I decided against that idea and picked the "won over last Christmas" tier III Supermarine Type 224 instead and made my attempt. After a couple of battles to warm things up, I was down to one more win to collect on Price of Victory and 120 combat xp for Barehanded.

Another hero from the golden age of aviation comics. Dennis Quinn was his name, but he went by the handle of Golden Eagle. Riding on the coattails of the more successful Blackhawk series, this Contact Comics character would fade into obscurity after the company folded after just two years.

Golden Eagle would make his first appearance in a modified, gold painted Curtiss P-40, then in a Bell Airacobra/King Cobra and ending out his short career in a P-51 Mustang. A digital archive of Golden Eagle adventures can be found here http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=27185

Nice battle, Q. A suggestion, if I may; you may want to look into mapping keys for team commands, specifically "coordinated attack" and "clear my tail". They can both be quite useful when you have a lot of surviving bots on your team.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787

Nice battle, Q. A suggestion, if I may; you may want to look into mapping keys for team commands, specifically "coordinated attack" and "clear my tail". They can both be quite useful when you have a lot of surviving bots on your team.

Well now, I didn't know that, thanks

Tonight, I loaded up the game and took stock on just how high up the tiers I have reached since the Launch Day, many years ago now. I knew I had reached the Jet Age first with Soviet Attack Aircraft (including my only tier X, for the time being), then Soviet Fighters with the Yak line. Next, I broke the German threshold by acquiring a Me 262 and rounded things off with my next-to-top-tier jet British Heavy Fighter, the P. 228.

Before I left last time, I was just starting with the J7W1 for Japan, so the next tiered jet in that nation is a very, very long ways off. Then I looked to my U.S. lines....

With a quick selection of new skills, I had my pilot ready to go....

....with my new goal of parking my first U.S. jet in my hangar. Starting off with 147,751 xp needed to tier IX F-94D looks very doable, but I wanted to see my previous performance in the tier VIII GoodYear F2G Super Corsair.

The reality was very clear, I wasn't very good with the aircraft before. However, by looking at the numbers, I can see why. I needed to severely cripple or shoot down more aircraft to collect on the better xp payouts and avoid ground targets, unless absolutely necessary. Dealing out the maximum damage was nearly as good as collecting a win, that was the mindset I intended to use. I readied up for my first battle with this plane in months....

Wasn't that a stellar experience!

It took my next battle to collect the first win and proof a player can earn decent (okay, a little on the low side, but the right side of a negative sign) credits in a non-premium, higher tiered aircraft. I decided to run a series of five battles with the Super Corsair, here is how they turned out....

3 wins, 2 defeats and 10 aircraft destroyed (average 2 per battle played). Now that has to be an improvement of some kind, I would hope. Two things really stuck out for me while flying the F2G after all this time, first, the guns heated up real quick and didn't throw out the same kind of damage like the Soviet and German equivalents. Second, that engine felt like it took forever to cool down, something I will look into remedying.

In keeping with the higher tiers, I picked another aircraft to offset skill training and additional credit generation, I choose the only premium aircraft I regret buying. The tier VII XP-75 Eagle Heavy Fighter has been a proven performer in quite a few other player's hands. I have demonstrated in the past that me and this plane are a liability pairing, to use kind words. Nevertheless, in this new age of abandoning my comfort zone, I queued up for a battle....

After I saw these screens, I had to go to the bathroom and take a very long look in the mirror, just to be sure it was really me staring back.

Time once again for another five round session in the Super Corsair! The first battle was a landslide defeat of epic facepalm proportions. The next battle was a much closer defeat, but still not that win I was looking for. I could feel the frustration trying to set in already. As the queue screen for the third battle began, I remembered something MagusGerhardt said, just the other day....

MagusGerhardt, on 15 June 2016 - 05:39 AM, said:

Nice battle, Q. A suggestion, if I may; you may want to look into mapping keys for team commands, specifically "coordinated attack" and "clear my tail". They can both be quite useful when you have a lot of surviving bots on your team.

How sound was that advice? Take a look at this replay from that battle and see for yourself.

Spoiler

He made a believer out of me! Funny thing, watching that replay myself, I am amazed I was able to shoot anything down, the shells seem to be so far of their marks....

A near repeat of the last session, with 3 victories, 2 defeats and 12 aircraft shot down. I am not going to jinx myself and just leave this on that note.